On Wednesday (October 14), Zilliqa, the blockchain startup that “was born at the National University of Singapore” and which launched its mainnet in January 2019, announced the official launch of Zillion, its non-custodial staking platform.

Here is how Binance Research describes Zilliqa:

  • “Zilliqa (ZIL) is one of the world’s first blockchains being built on a sharded architecture and features smart contracts written in the platform’s proprietary programming language: Scilla.”
  • “Zilliqa’s smart-contract platform scales linearly without compromising on the needed security provided by the decentralization of validating nodes. The platform successfully balances the prevailing blockchain “trilemma”: security, scalability, and decentralization.”
  • “Zilliqa’s utility token, ZIL, can be used to navigate the Zilliqa blockchain by executing smart contracts and paying transactions fees. ZIL is further paid out as a block reward.”

According to a press release shared with CryptoGlobe, as part of this launch, Zilliqa “has also introduced a new fungible token to the network—governance ZILs (gZIL), which will be earned alongside staking rewards, functioning as an incentive for long-term token holders.” Zilliqa will only issue gZIL for roughly one year; there is a cap of 682,550 on gZIL minting and distribution. 

Amrit Kumar, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Zilliqa, had this to say about today’s launch of staking on Zilliqa’s mainnet:

“After months of rigorous testing with the help of our enthusiastic community, staking is now finally live on Zilliqa, marking a major milestone for our team this year.

“As one of the first sharded blockchains to implement staking onto the network, we are thrilled to be joining the ranks of some of our most innovative peers, as we continue to build out future-fit DeFi offerings.”

Zilliqa says that staking will “allow for greater decentralisation across its seed node architecture—unique to the network’s sharded structure” and that the service will “incentivise the participation of select node operators and community members to support the service.”

He later added:

“Today, poor user interfaces remain one of blockchain’s key barriers to adoption and utilisation. Zillion looks to offer an unparalleled user experience, designed to appeal to newcomers to the world of staking and seasoned network participants while pioneering a new standard of security and user protections across today’s ecosystem of DeFi services.”

Zilswap, “a decentralised exchange built by Switcheo Exchange on the Zilliqa network,” will allow users to “easily hold their gZIL, withdraw, trade, and re-stake their staking rewards, or pool ZIL and gZIL rewards in staking pools on Zilswap.”

Zilliqa estimates that “with 80% of circulating supply being staked, the annual returns through staking will be around 6%.”